Nexo demos compact yet powerful GEO M6 line array cabinet

Nexo invited press and customers to a demo and launch event at the Dallas Burston Polo Club in Warwickshire on 30 September. The event was a double demo, featuring two different line array cabinets: the compact GEO M6, and the M28, which augments the manufacturer’s STM (Scale Through Modularity) series.

Although it was shown in the spring at Prolight + Sound, the GEO M6 had not been given a public demo before. It is a versatile unit, designed for theatres, conference halls, corporate AV, live events and public spaces.

“The GEO M6 answers the market need for more compact, yet still powerful, units with a reduced visual impact,” said Mathieu Pobeda, who works in the company’s R&D department and served as project leader on the M6.

“I took onboard a lot of the comments from people that will specify the room and the staging, rather than the sound guys – [the former] people didn’t want the M6 to be too intrusive in their environment. That’s what we had to achieve and yet still give good performance, soundwise,” he continued.

“The design brief said that it should be elegant and powerful, with all the Nexo science ‘squeezed’ into a small package. And it should integrate nicely with all environments.”

The M6 is an important move for Nexo in the installation direction, he added: “We want to come to that market with a narrow but powerful unit that will integrate well.”

The main G6 module is the M620; measuring 191mm (H) x 373 (W) x 260mm (D) and weighing 9.7kg. It can be complemented by the M6B bass extender, which is the same size and can be flown in the same array. ”You can get a bit more headroom on the M620 by using this module,” commented Pobeda.

A range of accessories is available for wall-mounting, flying, pole-mounting or clamping to trussing. The NEXOSkeletion rigging system has been designed to bear the structural forces of an M6 cluster and reduce the mechanical load on the cabinets.

A number of patented technologies underpin the M6’s performance. The cabinet features the Hyperbolic Reflective Wavesource, whose design has been optimised using finite element analysis. “This is the core technology of the GEO range, and what has allowed us to achieve the coverage and to allow really nice coupling without interference from the boxes,” said Pobeda. It also means that the M6’s measured response curve is close to an ideal theoretical response.

Adding waveguide flanges to the HF exit enables the horizontal coverage to be increased from the standard 80º to 120º.

The M6 has been optimised to match Nexo’s own amplifiers. A single NXAMP4X1 four-channel amplifier can power up to 12 M6 cabinets.

Nexo demonstrated the system in three configurations. The first was with two ground stacks, each consisting of three M620 cabinets augmented by an LS18 sub-bass cabinet – suitable for corporate events, live music or portable PA applications. This gave good even coverage across the width and length of the venue, with strong bass.

The second demo was of two hangs of six M620s, with no additional bass units – a configuration that would suit large speech events, a delay system, or music playback. Finally, four LS18s on the floor were added for the third demo. This arrangement would be right for large corporate events, live music concerts or houses of worship.

The remainder of the event was devoted to the new M28 cabinet. As Nexo concert sound representative Stuart Kerrison pointed out, these are so flexible that they had recently been used in a 200-capacity club in Brighton and also in front of 200,000 concertgoers at a festival in Mexico.